Elements of Land Law. By Kevin Gray
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1989.tb02824.x |
| Author | Michael Harwood |
| Published date | 01 March 1989 |
| Date | 01 March 1989 |
272
THE
MODERN
LAW
REVIEW
[Vol.
52
concern with truth and justice, at least in part, must be a result
of
the Enlightenment’s presentation
of
those questions in their modern
form. Hutchinson makes a god of
full
democracy. That god was,
and is, an enduring, important, essentialist notion, for which we
have to thank (if that’s the right word) Enlightenment thinking.
Hutchinson
is
searching for democratic heavens, not Heaven; but
his heavens may be formed by the very traditions that he wants to
dispatch to Satan; sorry,
sat an^.^
COSTAS DOUZINAS*
SHAUN MCVEIGHT
RONNIE WARRINGTON*
ELEMENTS
OF
LAND LAW. By KEVIN GRAY. [London: Butterworths.
THERE
is a pressing need for land law (or, as
I
would prefer,
general property) texts and courses which break the still prevalent
Lawsonian myth that land law
is
an “intensely abstract
.
.
.
calculus
remarkably similar to mathematics
. . .
moving in a world from
which everything physical or material is excluded”’ and which
recognise the fact that the property lawyer who qualifies in
1992
(whether he serves the rich or the poor) will not be spending his
time drafting strict settlements, making and breaking entails.*
Kevin Gray offers his book as seeking “to describe the elements
of
contemporary land law against the background
of
the social and
political implications
of
the subject.”
(
P.v.).
In fact his excursions
into the socio-economic and ideological underpinnings
of
land law
are not just included (as is too frequently the case in so-called
contextual books) as a briefly sketched, scenic backdrop to the
customary, solid fare
of
a “black-letter” exposition
of
the rules
of
law as they are perceived to be, frozen at a particular moment in
time. Rather, almost every page
of
Gray’s book is pervaded by his
attempt to link the statutes and decisions to, and explain them in
terms
of,
his notions of the social and
(to
a minimal extent)
economic reality and the historically developing trends
of
the law.
His approach influences his choice of topics for inclusion, his
analysis
of
the cases and legislation, and leads to the erection
of
1987.
lxix and
1094
pp.
f35.00
hb.,
f23.95
pb.]
’
Wc would likc
to
acknowlcdgc thc shadow
of
Alan Hunt’s articlc on Hutchinson’s
book, “Living Dangcrously on thc Dcconstructivc Edge,”
Utiiv.
of
Toronto
Law Review
(forthcoming), and thc help
of
David Sugarman, who commented on a draft.
Law Dcpartmcnt, Univcrsity
of
Lancastcr.
t
School
of
Law, Middlescx Polytcchnic.
‘
F.
R.
Lawson.
The
RatiotialStrength
of
Englisli Law
(1953).
p.
79.
*
Convcrsations with thc Law Commission suggcst that thc only strict scttlcmcnts
crcatcd today arc those crcatcd accidcntally by a failurc
to
dcclarc an cxprcss trust for
sale; and that, intcrcstingly, thcsc accidental strict scttlcmcnts tcnd
to
be the rcsult
of
sloppy lawyers’ drafting rather than D.I.Y. will makers. Pcrhaps traditionalist tcaching
fails
to
strcss the one thing that docs nccd
to
be strcsscd about strict scttlcmcnts: how
to
avoid thcm.
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